DisplayPort® is an exemplary and emerging digital display interface technology specified by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). Current incarnations of the standard specify support for simple networking of digital audio/visual (AIV) interconnects intended to be used primarily between an arbitrary assembly of multimedia “sources” (e.g., computers or CPUs) and “sinks” (e.g., display monitors, home-theater system, etc.). This interconnection is generally unidirectional in nature, i.e., from source to sink, in current implementations.
DisplayPort operation is inherently limited according to certain physical limitations of the DisplayPort cable. Specifically, as DisplayPort signaling traverses a length of cable, the signal experiences attenuation and distortion. Beyond a certain length, the signal is irrecoverable. These undesired effects are more severe at higher signaling speeds. Recent upgrades to DisplayPort have added higher data rates, e.g., adding 2.7 Gbits/s, 5.4 Gbits/s, and 8.1 Gbits/s to existing implementations of 1.62 Gbits/s.
Signal conditioning devices may be used for improving DisplayPort operation. An example of a signal conditioning device is a so-called “retimer”. Existing DisplayPort retimers are simple clock data recovery (CDR) circuits that extend the cabling of a DisplayPort cable by recovering the original clock and data, and regenerating a “clean” version of the signal.
Other features of the present embodiments will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description that follows.